1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for selecting at least one steel grade from a stock of data, stored in a memory, for a population of a plurality of steel grades using a data processing device. Furthermore, the invention relates to a program product for carrying out the method and to a data processing device having a memory which stores such a program product.
2. Prior Art
There are a large number of different steel grades. The individual steel grades are characterized or denoted by various features, such as machinability, delivery temper, steel grade designation and many more features. For users of steel, particularly companies, it is often extremely difficult to determine the steel grade best suited to the respective purpose quickly and without error.
Often, the user's specific purpose means that it is important to him for the steel grade to have at least two or three core properties or core features. By way of example, these may be a particular tensile strength value, a particular machinability classification or an achievable working temper. In this context, the particular values do not usually need to be achieved exactly by the respective steel grade, but rather it suffices if the actual values of the core features respectively vary within prescribed value ranges, exceed requisite minimum values or are below maximum permissible values. Steel manufacturers and suppliers usually provide information relating to steels only one-dimensionally, however, but not in an arbitrarily combinable fashion or with extended multi-dimensionality. By way of example, although a steel grade with a tensile strength value which the user requires can be identified very quickly, the identified steel grade may then not meet the requirements in respect of the further core features, such as machineability. This is because the machinability value for the respective steel grade is not queried until the steel grade corresponding to the desired tensile strength value has already been identified or preselected. The greater the number of core features which the user respectively requires to have desired values, the more difficult and laborious it is to identify a suitable steel grade or to select one from amongst the possible steel grades.